Happy Birthday, Steve Onderick

 

 

Anticipation

Steve Onderick has been working for over a decade on a documentary about the Church of Euthanasia, a group based in the Boston area for several years and especially prominent in the nineties and early aughties. I donated photography and audio from my past coverage to the project and was even interviewed at my old apartment in Southie, This summer, we received a Kickstarter update for the first time in a while.

In 2023, I got a look at what was then the finished film. I'm only showing a screenshot of the credits here. It was nice to be near the top of the "Special Thanks" list given that I don't appear in the documentary (insert a Daffy Duck impersonation here as I scream "What? Rich Mackin's name over mine?!?"). 

I recently scanned a lot of COE material and feel I have a couple of thousand words left to say on the subject. Thant makes me hope even more that the film is released soon and gets a special showing in Boston. Ideally in Brookline at Coolidge Corner Theatre, not far away from the scene of one of the Church's more infamous counter-protests.

 

Happy Birthday, Tom Tipton

 

 

Happy Birthday, Steve Onderick

 

Happy Birthday, Steve Onderick

 

 

Happy Birthday, Steve Onderick

 

Happy Birthday Steve Onderick

Show him some love and either rent or buy his documentary Who is Vermin Supreme?

From My Photo Archives: Did You Vote for The Unabomber?

This was sadly prophetic.

 Here's another photo I was able to finally rescue form my old, old memory card with a help of Steve Onderick a few weeks back.

The photo above was taken in late November 2001, probably just as I was getting back from Thanksgiving with my parents. 9/11, of course, was still hanging low over our heads, and I caught this bumper sticker outside the Hynes T stop.

The Unabomber write-in campaign, was the brainchild of Lyida Eccles, who is also one of the many people being interviewed for Steve's documentary on the Church of Euthanasia. The differences between demonstrations and political moments then and twenty years later as starkly different as night and day.

Like I was trying to tell Steve the other day, it's as if the political demonstrations were much more experiential and carefree, feeling like we had nothing to lose and everything to gain by way of being different and shocking. Now its almost two decades later, and now we have barely anything to gain and much much more to lose.

The Oddball Show With Filmmaker Steve Onderick

This Tuesday night the Oddballs are joined by the cinematic mind behind 2014's 'Who is Vermin Supreme?', filmmaker Stephen Onderick. His newest film is Save the Planet, Kill Yourself an independent documentary on the Church of Euthanasia. We'll dig into both films and what inspires his unique cinematic choices on this week's #OddballShow.